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Continuous discontinuation – The DDT Ban revisited
Alix Levain, Pierre Benoit Joly, Marc Barbier, Vincent Cardon, François Dedieu, Fanny Pellissier
To cite this version:
Alix Levain, Pierre Benoit Joly, Marc Barbier, Vincent Cardon, François Dedieu, et al.. Continuous discontinuation – The DDT Ban revisited. 6. International Sustainability Transitions Conference
”Sustainability transitions and wider transformative change, historical roots and future pathways”, University of Sussex. Brighton, GBR., Aug 2015, Brighton, United Kingdom. �hal-02507237�
1 International Sustainability Transitions Conference. 2015 Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Paper not to be quoted without the authorization of Authors
Continuous discontinuation – The DDT Ban revisited
Alix LEVAIN, Pierre-‐Benoit JOLY, Marc BARBIER, Vincent CARDON, François DEDIEU, Fanny PELLISSIER
UMR LISIS, Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée, 5 Bvd Descartes, Champs-‐sur-‐Marne, France
Abstract
Although innovation is considered as creative destruction, policies oriented to the withdrawal of socio- technical assemblages, have not been specifically studied so far. The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill this gap and to provide some elements of analysis of these policies that we call ‘outnovation policies’ in sustainability transitions. As template, we use the case of the withdrawal of DDT, one of the major post World War II innovations, as an emblematic case of outnovation. So far, the literature on DDT represents DDT withdrawal as a major public decision that resulted from environmental damages related to its massive and pervasive use. DDT ban is represented as a victory of the environmental movements in a period of constitution of an environmental policy stream. The literature perfectly captures the process of problematization of DDT, once considered as a magic solution to eradicate crop pests and fight insect-borne diseases like malaria and which becomes an iconic poisonous product. Based on the analysis of its ban in three countries (USA, France and UK), this paper focused on the missing parts of the DDT ban narratives through the lens of the dynamics of the regime of regulation. The story of the DDT could then be re-written on very different grounds. The paper advocates that the DDT ban wasn’t a major turning point for the pesticide regulation. On the contrary and by many ways it has enhanced the legitimacy of the pesticide regulatory’ s actors to control pesticide hazards. On this basis, we discuss general questions related to outnovation, and point out the dialectic relations between external contestation and re-stabilisation of the incumbent regime.
The key lesson for outnovation policy is that external contestation does not necessarily lead to a radically new regime. Rather, it may lead to major adaptations of the incumbent regime that are aimed at restabilization through integration of the critique and care of some of the externalities. Hence, outnovation policies should not be considered only as policies of radical change aiming at disruptive transitions, but also as finely tuned paradoxical processes of destabilization / restabilization of a given sociotechnical regime, which might be profoundly transformed in its composition and sustainable properties, but nevertheless still there.
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Table of contents
Introduction ... 3
1. Outnovation as a de-‐association process: conceptual framework ... 4
2. Matter of facts, Materials and Methods ... 7
3. National DDT banning processes: patterns of discontinuation ... 8
3.1. The U.S. foundational experience of baning a miracle powder ... 8
3.2. The French case: A discrete adjustment to changing international context ... 11
3.3. The UK case: Institutional reluctance to market regulation and progressive alignment ... 14
4. Comparison of the three national cases ... 16
4.1. Temporality of the phasing-‐out process ... 16
4.2. De-‐alignment and detachment processes ... 18
4.3. Articulation between DDT problem framing and the institutionalization of an outnovation policy ... 20
5. Discussion ... 22
5.1. Exploring the transnational dynamics within the detachment processes ... 22
5.2. Exploration outnovation as being both the de-‐association of a technology and a reinforcement of the socio-‐technical regime ... 23
5.3. Outnovation and meta-‐stability in the global regulatory regime ... 24
Conclusion ... 25
References ... 26
3
Introduction
Although innovation is classically considered as creative destruction process, policies oriented to the withdrawal of specific entities belonging to specific socio-‐technical assemblages, have been very little studied so far1. The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill this gap and to provide some elements of analysis of these policies that we propose to call ‘outnovation policies’. We define outnovation as a particular kind of process of detachment resulting in the de-‐association of a technology from a sociotechnical regime. Following Latour (2007), we will thus address outnovation policies as a political process aiming at the making and the regulation of new socio-‐technical assemblage performing and issuing this de-‐association.
This framework results from a comparative analysis of the case of the withdrawal of DDT in three western countries (the USA, the UK and France). DDT is one of the major post World War II innovations, and an already well documented as such and we intend to re-‐explore this emblematic case of outnovation. So far, the literature on DDT represents DDT withdrawal as a major public decision resulting from environmental struggles related to its massive and pervasive use. DDT ban is thus advocated as a victory’ of the environmental movements in a period of constitution of an environmental policy stream in the US and the related creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The literature perfectly captures the process of outnovation: once considered as a magic solution to eradicate crop pests (a "chemical crop insurance" trumpeted Scientist American, in June 19462) and fight insect-‐borne diseases like malaria, it has also become an iconic poisonous product to be banned. The construction of DDT as a public problem results from a bundle of actions: the well-‐known fight of Rachel Carson, the structuring and mobilization of environmental movements, the construction of anecdotal evidence by professionals and amateurs, the production of scientific facts by scientists, etc. It took huge efforts to construct DDT as a ‘cause’, both a political issue for which one is ready to mobilize, and the chains of causes between DDT and actual or potential harms. However, existing narratives of DDT ban are partial as far as outnovation is concerned, since they do not consider the very process of de-‐association, which was involved and destabilizing the industrialisation of western agriculture, notably thanks to pesticides uses for crop protection.
Indeed, the detachment from DDT occurs while intensive agricultural production had structurally become dependant on agro-‐chemicals, and synthesized pesticides. Yet, the DDT case may inform those mechanisms from a generic point of view, if analysed with two complementary approaches that enable to shed light on discontinuation in sociotechnical regime with an outnovation perspective:
- A processual approach, exploring how the many associations between DDT, farmers, the plants, the bugs, the malaria, etc. were unmade. The empirical question of this investigation is thus: how was it possible to untie links that were more and more thought and institutionally supported to be irreversible and a vital productive necessity?
- A retrospective approach of critical events and main incomes and outcomes of decision making, aiming at understanding the de-association processes in emerging environmental and human health regulation and in the crop protection regime. The empirical question corresponding to this investigation is thus: what can be learnt from a comparison of unlocking of the uses of DDT?
1This issue is at the heart of the DiscGo ORA Project (http://discontinuation-governance.net/about-discgo/), see Stegmaier et al., 2014.
2 Howard C.E. Johnson, 1946, Chemical crop insurance, American Scientist, june, 258-260
4 In order to feed the analysis of outnovation policies, it is thus necessary to shed light on some unseen or underreported aspects of the DDT ban. Our focus on innovation and regulatory regime invites thus to examine two neglected aspects of this history: the endogenous dynamics of the innovation regime, and the comparison of the variations in outnovation national policies.
Explaining possible variations invites us to address carefully the political aspects of outnovation processes, meaning: to avoid the temptation to naturalize detachment processes as being governed by scientific evidence delivery and technological progress on the one hand; and not to dismiss the importance of the environmental mobilization in the US as a performative symbolic worldwide narrative on the other hand. This symmetrical position about the DDT withdrawal enables to review the specificity of the US ban trajectory, since processes of withdrawal were slightly different in France and in the UK. We build upon this comparative account to show how outnovation policies may be part of restabilization processes and are thus not to be considered as drivers of a radical change: outnovation may both be incremental and a way to perform continuous discontinuation.
After developing our conceptual framework for the analysis of outnovation processes and the material and methods we build our analysis upon, we will analyse the narratives related to the DDT ban and present our main results concerning discontinuation patterns in the three countries studied. We then adopt a comparative approach of those three cases. Finally, we discuss our key findings in relation to socio-‐technical regime analysis and propose leads for further research on outnovation processes.
1. Outnovation as a de-association process: conceptual framework
Schumpeterian and STS approaches of innovation share a common representation of innovation as a process of emergent assemblages of technological artefacts, people and values. The etymology of the word innovation delivers an indication of this point view, as it frames the idea of renewing practices and uses by the adjunction or substitution of an object. The novelty of this object is not necessarily a condition of the irruption of novelty in a field of practices. According to such an etymological reflection, the purposive creation of novelty through the invention of objects that are dedicated to break into the reality of users appears to be a type of innovation that correspond to the Schumpeterian tradition of creative destruction of existing assemblage.
The mundane industrial mind eye of innovation has retained, if not fetishized, this meaning, as the notion of breakthrough innovation is still carrying it.
In this “tradition”, it is rather intriguing that the abandonment of a technology, whilst it is considered as a side effect of the innovation process (the destructive part of the ‘creative destruction’), has not received much attention, as if the process of adoption would be sufficient to rationalization abandonment, insisting on resistance or even pointing the irrationality of non-‐
users. Within this rather positivist vision of innovation much attention has shed light on purposive translation and strategies of successful breakthrough. Failure of innovation process has thus received less attention within STS work despite the axiomatic of strong symmetry (exception with some important case studies like the illuminating Aramis of Bruno Latour).
Recently, within the framework of Actor-‐network-‐Theory (ANT), GOULET AND VINCK (2012) have proposed to frame a sociological enquiry of detachments in order to analyse in a systematic way the withdrawal of technological artefacts. However, they do not address the broader question of the relationship between the withdrawal of a technological artefact and the correlative changes of the socio-‐technical regime within which it is nested. Nor they pay attention to dedicated policy of detachment. Abandonment of a technology has thus rarely been put at the heart of a
5 dedicated policy until the late decades of environmental claims and the more recent claim for sustainability transitions that target the retreat of molecules, technology, practices and even large sociotechnical system like nuclear energy.
It follows that there is a growing need of academic studies going the reverse way, and to develop a stream of empirical investigation on policies that target the abandonment of a given technology, and to consider the process of this abandonment when it is driven by specific policies that orient to the withdrawal of specific socio-‐technical assemblages that used to be innovative (Stegmaier et al. 2014). In this general framework of discontinuation governance, our perspective on ‘outnovation’ benefits from earlier investigations about policy-‐making concerning the control of technological choice. From the first work about the emergence of Board of Technological Assessment (in the US with the OTA and in Europe with the Danish Board of Technology, see Vig and Paschen, 2000), a stream of work has described the framework, the momentum, the settings and the knowledge of technological assessment (TA), notably when TA has been exposed to controversy spaces which govern process of formal assessment (Cambrosio & Limoges, 1991). In the light of these investigations, an emphasis has been put on the structural effect of power-‐relations based on normative knowledge, but balanced by pluralistic mobilization in the appraisal of technology. This stream of reflection has issued concepts like Constructive Technology Assessment (Rip, et al., 1995), displaced the issue of impact measurement (Kuhlman, 1998) and considerably enriched the vision of public decision makers about uncertainty and precaution (ESTO report). Pluralistic views of technology are thus proposed has a key feature of policy making about technological choice (Stirling, 2008).
The “precautionary principle” turn in Europe has thus convoked new approaches of governance for sustainable development (Voß et al., 2006) and various disciplinary inquiries about how system innovation -‐ also named transition-‐ can be influenced and governed by different type of actors (Elzen et al. 2004).
Looking at outnovation does not ignore this stream of works and their epistemological foundations that have grounded a knowledge capacity to unfold technocentric science and innovation policy. Paying attention to variety of actors, knowledge, artefacts and settings is maintained in our outnovation perspective, in order to embrace the socio-‐political processes about intentional technological retreat and to study long run processes of discontinuation that muddled through sociotechnical regime. It is especially the case regarding environmental issues, which are more and more associated with the claim of a political intentionality to break away from technologies presenting adverse effects on ecosystems and human health (STEGMAIER &
KUHLMAN, 2014). Contemporary approaches of socio-‐technical transition policies thus need to take into account a quite understudied process: the one that leads to the eviction of a technology from the complex socio-‐technical assemblage it has been entailed in. Transitions are as much exploration of sustainable novelty than getting away of what has been considered innovative.
Different frames of analysis have been devoted to the study of technological change at the meso-‐
level with the purpose to enlighten the understanding of innovation processes, such as technological trajectories (DOSI 1984), socio-‐technical systems and socio-‐technical regimes (see BORRAS & EDLER 2014 for a recent review). As compared to the two former approaches, ST-‐
regimes focus much on socio-‐cultural dimensions rather than economic ones, and it is more embedded in sociological and institutional analysis. We shall thus favour this framework to position our discussions on outnovation. A ST-‐regime is defined as the “rule-‐set or grammar embedded in a complex of engineering practices, production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, ways of handling relevant artefacts and persons, ways of defining problems, all of them embedded in institutions and infrastructures” (RIP & KEMP, 1998:
338; see also: BERKHOUT ET AL., 2004). This ST-‐regimes notion has enable robust analyses on transitions (GEELS 2002, GEELS AND SCHOT 2007, GRIN, ROTHMANS AND SCHOT 2010) and may be summarized as follows: transition is viewed as the phase between two states of stabilized
6 regimes and the dynamics of transition –represented as a multi-‐level process MLP-‐ are constituted by the interactions between regime weakening, niches exploration and landscape pressure. In such a framework, the abandonment of technological artefacts is an evolutionary consequence of the process, and is not particularly analysed as such.
In the frame of MLP transition models, TURNHEIM AND GEELS (2013) have identified the necessity to focus on dynamics of destabilization of incumbent regime with the view to elaborate thick analysis of transition pathways. These authors have identified three main sources of destabilization: (i) outside pressures (related to the landscape or to alternatives in niches); (ii) performance problems (weakening of the technologies of the incumbent regime) and (iii) weakening of the commitment of industry actors. Considering this later source of destabilization, they identify gradual reactions of incumbent companies: (i) cost cutting; (ii) incremental innovation; (iii) more distant exploration; (iv) challenge of core beliefs. Hence, this contribution conducts to pay attention to the micro-‐dynamics of destabilization / restabilization.
Following on this lead, this paper defines the process of outnovation as a dual dynamics between incremental changes related to the withdrawal of individual technological artefacts and changes of ST-‐regime. While focusing on product withdrawal outnovation is to be considered from three related lines of investigation: (i) restabilization of incumbent regime that has the ability to absorb external shocks; (ii) events that contribute to the unlocking of the incumbent association and open up possibilities of delayed changes of ST-‐regime; (iii) destabilization that affects the ST-‐regime and leads to global challenges while opening up alternative pathways. Hence, the withdrawal of products may be interpreted as a dialectical condition for the sustainability of the ST-‐regime when it allows both to focus on the critics and to promote incremental improvements.
In such case, a regime of continuous incremental change is more likely to be observed than any profound changes. In other cases, the withdrawal of a product may contribute to changes within ST-‐regime, more or less directly. As it is the case for innovation studies, we could distinguish there between incremental and breakthrough outnovation. But we rather suggest that the key analytical aim is to explore the conditions that favour one or the other as well as the interactions between both, moreover the size and scope of the regime might also change through time. To address this analytical challenge that questions the notion of regime itself, it is necessary to analyse the technology withdrawal under three main analytical directions.
Regulation and innovation regime. Alongside, a global approach of the regime’s dynamics is necessary, and a good proxy to explore the withdrawal is to look at regulation and innovation process. i) Regulatory regimes and the risks they aim at preventing and managing, (Hood et al., (1999) have pointed out the many ways to regulate risks); ii) innovation regimes, defined classically as stabilized formal and informal rules (routines) that are both cognitive and socio-‐
technical (NELSON AND WINTER, 1977; DOSI, 1982).
The de-‐association process. As regards to its material properties, but also to its cultural and symbolic status, so as to understand the nature and strength of the relationships that link a particular technology to the regime. GOULET AND VINCK (2012) have proposed to explore the mechanisms of detachment involves (centrifugal association, reinforcement of existing relationships, association of new entities and invizibilisation of some of the existing associations).
The institutionalization of an outnovation policy. The dynamics of the regime may be described by an overlook on its key-‐elements, following the framework developed by Schot and Geels (SCHOT, 1998; GEELS, 2001; GEELS AND SCHOT, 2007), we shall take the opportunity to understand the dynamics of regime not only from its inside but also from its outside paying attention to the complex dynamics of social movements, knowledge production and circulation, and governance that originate the institutionalize of a withdrawal (MAGUIRE & HARDY, 2009).
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2. Matter of facts, Materials and Methods
We build our argument on a specific case, which already received much scientific and public attention: the DDT ban. Both DDT itself and the banning process have been described as critical triggers in the dynamics of the plant protection socio-‐technical regime, in a way that we can consider DDT as a structuring emblematic technology: because it has been considered as a major innovation related to the Noble price of Paul Müller, and also because is has been considered as a major outnovation related to a “noble activist” in the name of Rachel Carson.
We focused on the DDT case, because it offers a quite striking contrast: it retrospectively seems to have played a significant role in these regime shifts, especially as regards to science, politics and culture; but the ways in which its withdrawal led to those shifts and the intensity of these changes are still partially documented. Maguire and Hardy (2009) provided an insight of this process as regards to the US situation: they described the DDT case as the “abandonment of widespread, taken-‐for-‐granted practices of DDT use” in the 60s’ and at the beginning of the 70s’
as resulting from a shift in problematization about pesticides used, driven by new actors and which undermined “institutional pillars supporting practices” (MAGUIRE & HARDY, 2009).
Founding their approach on discourse analysis, they analysed the period of 1962-‐1972 as critical for the deinstitutionalization3 process. Their seminal work, though, called for more systematic comparison and left the issue of the socio-‐technical regime unaddressed, which is key to understand the significance of technology eviction.
Agrochemicals are a science-‐based industry, strongly dependant of chemistry, especially during their initial developing phase (DAVIS, 2014). It also involves plant biology and, in the case of insecticides, the (well and early in the US) structured field of economic entomology. In relation both to the economic and politic concerns about developing compounds with more and more targeted effects (and, thus, more and more possibilities of control devices), it is also concerned with ecology and ecotoxicology. Technologies involved thus tend to become more specialized, with a diversification of compounds and conditioning. Since the Second World War, three main families of compounds are produced and used for crop protection: organochlorines (or organic hydrocarbons), organophosphates, and neonicotinoides.
The market has been structured by a few global companies dedicated to pesticides production, with a high degree of concentration of the sector, and with a high R&D intensity (TAIT, 2001). At first largely supported by the fight against domestic pests, the market has then and until now been mainly driven by the high dependency of modern and mechanized agriculture to chemical pesticides. As regards to policies, if various sub-‐models of regulation characterize Europe and the US, both have known phases of pressure on the dominant regime, which may be described as the controlled use regime (DÉCOSSE, 2013). Political pressures on the regime appear to reach a new intensity with the Rio Conference in 1992 and the "blacklisting" of the “dirty dozen, and later on in Europe with the emergence of global reduction strategy for the reduction of pesticides4. These basic features show that the pesticides regime needs to be described with a dynamic approach and that the significance and impact of some evolutions remain un-‐assessed,
3 A process these authors define as “the process whereby previously institutionalized practices are abandoned”, mainly because they “have lost their original meaning” (MAGUIRE & HARDY, 2009: 150). This process supposes, according to institutional theory, “some form of purposive “disruptive institutional work ...to undermine these meanings.”
4 During the 2000’s the European Parliament and the Commission have shaped this strategy which has issued the so-‐called « pesticides package » in 2009: Regulation (CE) n°1107/2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market, Directive 2009/128/CE establishing a common framework for the sustainale use of pesticides, Regulation (CE) n°1185/2009 concerning statistics on pesticides and Directive 2009/127/CE with regard to machinery for pesticide application.
8 because it presents both elements of meta-‐stability and successive socio-‐technical configurations leading to partial shifts.
We have thus carried out a longitudinal and comparative study on the DDT phasing-‐out process in the United States, the United Kingdom and France, noticing that the US-‐phasing-‐out process came first and seemed to impact what happened then after in the UK and in France. We thus focused on the 1942-‐1986 period, from the first uses of DDT to its official ban in the UK, which occurs later than in in most of industrialized countries. We mainly focused on written primary sources, especially public governmental archives, and secondary sources, such as professional, advocacy groups and generalist press and literature. Each country has its own combination of relevant and available sources, which gives in itself a significant indication on the specific history and characteristics of national regulation regimes. This is also true for secondary sources. For instance, as the DDT case has been largely discussed in public arenas in the USA since the 1960s’, both public archives, academic and advocacy literature are quite extensive. By contrast, in France, one can hardly find a reference to DDT in general medias or in parliamentary debates, which led us to use data-‐mining processes and to explore unreleased sources and under-‐exploited archive funds. We put our data in perspective with general characterization of the pesticides socio-‐technical outnovation policy. Thanks to these approaches, we could qualify finely these dynamics, assess the levers that triggered changes in the global regime, and propose a framework for the analysis of the de-‐association of DDT and related discontinuation within the pesticides regulatory regime.
Although this case is very well documented, we tried to re-‐examine the narratives the literature relies on, in order to understand the way “outnovations” emerge and are regulated. We will insist on two main points. First, we will show that taking into account national ways to withdraw a molecule like DDT proves efficient. We state that in France and UK, most of the DDT history has been carried out by endogenous -‐ and not exogenously/mobilization driven -‐
processes, in contrast with what has accrued in the US. Second, we will explore the structure and dynamics of the pesticides production and innovation regimes.
3. National DDT banning processes: patterns of discontinuation
3.1. The U.S. foundational experience of banning a miracle powder
Among the hundreds of chemical compounds synthesised since WWII to serve as pesticides, DDT is one of the most famous and controversial. Despite its withdrawal as an agricultural pesticide in most countries since the 70s’ and 80s’, and the dramatic decrease of its production and consumption, it remains an iconic product. Its story – how a miracle powder became a notorious villain -‐ has been told and re-‐told, even in the most recent period5. Therefore it is not that easy to study the patterns of discontinuation through time, since a lot of discourses can be taken either as primary sources or as simply ex-‐post comments on previous events. This
5In his latest book, A rough ride to the future (LOVELOCK,2014), the world-famous biologist James Lovelock, who conceptualized the “Gaïa hypothesis”, states that “Neither Rachel Carson, nor the green movement – nor the US government seemed aware of the direct human consequence of banning the manufacture of DDT and its lookalikes before substitutes were available ... In 1963 malaria was about to become effectively controlled. The insecticide ban led to a rise in malaria deaths to 2 million yearly, plus over 100 million disabled by the disease. » (P.127).
9 problem is largely reinforced by the fact that the DDT ban is still a matter of controversy today, and merchants of doubts have also to be taken into account in outnovation processes, of course.
Debates surrounding DDT use have not entirely vanished. They have been going on, since R.Carson’s seminal denunciation of the dangers of pesticides in 1962 (CARSON, 1962 ; GRAHAM,
1970), a book until now considered as « one of the most influential (…) of the mid-‐20th century » (GROSHONG, 2002). Carson used DDT as a major example of the long-‐term deleterious effects of chlorinated hydrocarbons, which were at the time massively and indiscriminately used as insecticides. Silent Spring gave rise to a public debate in the United States: its publication in the New Yorker in June, 1962 was followed by what some opponents to Carson’s thesis called a
“noisy summer” (BROOKS, 1972; GROSHONG, 2002). The book was also denounced as irresponsibly advocating a complete ban of all pesticides, thus endangering human welfare and announcing the comeback of massive pests and to “desolate years”.
Our extensive review of the academic literature shows that the discursive landscape on DDT can be synthesised in three key points. Should they come from pro or from anti-‐DDT, most narratives about the DDT ban: (1) emphasise the role of exogenous pressures, and especially stress the role of the emergent environmental movement in the 60s’ and emblematic public figures -‐ namely Rachel Carson -‐ to trigger political change; (2) they also maintain that the claims and actions of those movements resulted in significant shifts in the regulation of pesticides and (3) implicitly suppose that the American history of DDT is paradigmatic, which materializes in the specific attention given to the 1962-‐1972 period. We propose to analyse these 3 elements to characterize both the type of problematization attached to the DDT ban (and more generally outnovation processes), the resulting blind spots regarding this process and the shifts it implied in the pesticides socio-‐technical regime.
As a matter of fact, the DDT case has several properties that allow it to be recycled until today as a debated issue. First, it was a non-‐targeted pesticide, widely used on a variety of insects and in very different contexts (fighting against human vectorial diseases and against agricultural and forest pests). It was thus well known in many countries, and both in industrial, agricultural, and domestic contexts (see Box 1.). Moreover, it was cheap, because DDT was not patented. Its rapid and worldwide expansion in the 40s’ and 50s’ made it a symbol of American post-‐war technological successes (KINKELA, 2011)6. This expansion was institutionally widely supported by the main private and institutional actors and endorsers of intensive agriculture, who built on the material and economic properties of the molecule and the variety of its packaging.
Box 1. Early uses of an all-‐purpose magical product
Early uses of DDT targeted many problems that appeared during WW2 with concentration of civilians and soldiers in camps, before its large use in Naples overload (See for instance: ROSE,1944). The industrial capacity and the generalisation of the “hygienic use” of DDT started in Europe and in the US in 1942, before an expansion towards the protection of crops against insects (NASH,2004), starting with field trials, for instance to eradicate greenhouse fly (HOLDAWAY,1944). It is thus important to consider that the use of DDT for crop protection derived from hygienic uses and the fight against malaria in the first place, both part of the war effort, especially on the Pacific front (RUSSEL,1999). The industrial capacities have thus been firstly defined and designed for this purpose, before it has quickly expanded just after the war for crop protection purposes.
6 See also, for instance, the testimony of B. Harvey, one of the top managers of the Agency for International Development, at the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 1966 : DDT is presented as one of the best examples of the contribution of American technology to development (ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE,1966)
10 Second, the specific attention given to the 1962-‐1973 period is a clue of an almost exclusive focus on the banning process in the US. The period is marked by fierce debates involving top-‐
managers of governmental agencies, agro-‐chemical firms executives and, increasingly, experts and scientists. They triggered several political statements at the highest level and institutional evolutions, favoured the reinforcement of the nascent environmental movement, and the development of new levers and tools that renewed the risk assessment methods related to the use of pesticides (DUNLAP, 1978). Hence, the dominant narrative enhances the role of science as a major factor of an increased political awareness towards the toxicity of chemical compounds used in agriculture, and DDT constituted an experimental case making possible better decisions -‐ i.e. more rational because science based -‐ to be taken and new regulation regimes to be set up.
This shift was a major transformation, from a target of environmental struggles, DDT first but then other pesticide become matter of regulation sciences. So, as soon as in the 70s’, the “DDT case” became a widely mentioned and studied case, at the same time idiosyncratic, unprecedented, and allegedly symptomatic of a new era for public problem setting through the use of political means available with the regulation of chemicals in the environment. Public concerns further manifested through the activities of various environmental organizations.
Beginning in 1967, the Environmental Defence Fund, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League and other environmental groups became increasingly active. They initiated court trials leading to the restriction of DDT use at both local and Federal levels in the US. The DDT case was important enough to be considered by Government Committees who issued four reports, in 1963, 1965, 1969 (DUNLAP, 1981; BOSSO,
1987; DAVIS, 2014, CH. 6 TO 8). All four reports recommended an orderly phasing out of the pesticide over a limited period of time. So, together with other conflicts and concerns, DDT was one of the issues that contributed to the construction of environment as a public problem and lead to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 (see Box 2.).
Box 2. The new face of pesticides regulation in the USA after the “noisy years”
In the 70s’, the pesticides registration activities of the USDA and the tolerance setting offices of the FDA were transferred to the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The day after the EPA had been established, environmental groups began a series of lawsuits demanding that the Agency cancel DDT and a number of other persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons pesticides.
Congress completely rewrote FIFRA. The amendments had a far broader remit than the 1947 version of the legislation, covering for example, research policy, and controls over usage (BLODGETT 1974, P.267). The new bill prohibited the registration of pesticides that cause “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment”. Congress insisted that any risks be weighed against benefits, and consequently the term
“unreasonable adverse effects” was defined as any unreasonable risk to man or the environment, taking into account the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits to the use of any pesticide.
Under the amendments, all new pesticides had to be registered with the EPA, all existing products previously registered under FIFRA had to be re-registered under the new standards, and all registrations were automatically cancelled after five years unless the registrant requested a new assessment. The Agency also had the authority to “cancel” a registration at any time if new evidence demonstrated “unreasonable adverse effects”. In addition, the amendments allowed third party interests to sue the EPA on cancellation or suspension matters (though not in the absence of Agency action), and supporting data (for example, on toxicity or efficacy) were made available to the public after the EPA had taken registration decisions about the product. Nonetheless, the Senate and House agricultural committees retained their jurisdiction over pesticide matters, and many of the proposals for stringent pesticide regulation died in those committees.
EPA further banned DDT in 1972. Thus, a withdrawal of DDT seems to entail a major technological, economical and political shift and to be driven by strong social mobilisation and political willpower
11 The dominant narrative stresses the crucial role of social mobilisation, of debates in public arena, and the strategic dimension of the ban. One can easily see it when noting the importance of a “pre-‐post” rhetoric in academic publications. As a matter of fact, the scientific literature accounts for a periodization of time that reflects particularly well the organization of discourses insisting on the societal dimension of this molecule. Three eras are generally identified by the literature: pre-‐DDT era (1934-‐1942)(O’HARA, 1946), DDT era (1946-‐1972), and post-‐DDT era (1973-‐1991; sensu BEDNARZ ET AL. 1990)”, cited in ALLEN, ET AL., 1996). This “pre-‐post” pattern covers a large range of scientific fields, from ornithology to history (JACKSON, 1976; JARMAN,
2012) and, later, social studies of science and regulation (WHORTON, 1976; DUNLAP, 1978; GAY,
2012; JAS, 2007) and ecotoxicology (HARDING, 1988).
Based on such a common account, the pattern of the DDT ban in the US has the following characteristics: (i) social mobilization is the main trigger, particularly when it relies on science-‐
based data; (ii) this mobilization gains some importance since it is aligned with policy stream – the construction of the environmental policy; (iii) the pace of termination is short (10 years), the ban being total, and resulting from a coordinated decision process. More specifically, the common history of DDT ban stresses the role of a specific compound as a strong political breach (see for instance: TAIT, 2001). (iv) A particular importance is given to disruption and to the importance of discourse changes implying a shift in the way actors involved think, act, and take positions (MAGUIRE AND HARDY, 2009).
We argue that this point requires specific attention and research, for several reasons. The first one is that the US ban actually appears as a long and eventually reversible process. The use of the term “ban” hides a more complex reality made of progressive disengagement of incumbents from the promotion of the technology and from its use, while maintaining exemptions for specific agricultural uses. So phasing out process would be a more accurate term. The second one is that the phasing out process should be put in perspective with the effective use of the technology. Indeed, to assess the significance of the ban, one should be able to identify an inflexion point in the production and consumption of the compound. Thirdly, the very idea of an identifiable disruption should be examined since such a phenomenon is specific to the US case and not as obvious in France or UK, as we will see in the next section. The account of the US DDT ban is thus both informative and so specific that it gives only part of the global picture of the withdrawal of the DDT as a worldwide technology.
3.2. The French case: A discrete adjustment to changing international context
By contrast with the common account according to which the 60s’ are marked by a reinforcement of regulatory devices on chemicals, legislative framework remains very stable in France from 1943 until 1972. In 1943, under the Vichy’s State, a homologation system of chemical products is settled, with the explicit aim to improve efficiency of commercialized compounds and protect farmers from quality variation. The system relies on 2 expert committees, the first devoted to « antiparasitory products in agriculture » (CPAP), the second to the use of toxic products (ComTox). The ComTox is in charge of eco-‐toxicological effects assessments concerning cattle and humans. Each Committee examines homologation requests and delivers a report to governmental authorities, which takes the final decision.
12 DDT is homologated in 1947 as an insecticide, with
special recommendations concerning precautions for use, especially concerning bees. The issue of insect resistance to DDT becomes visible in France through several crises during the 60s’, directly challenging its efficiency and opening the way to the use of alternative compounds. Technical sources (professional journals, State services of control, etc.) report alerts as soon as 19467. This leads the State services to recommend not using DDT alone but to use it in combination with other pesticides (lindane, toxaphene, aldrine) and/or alternate the compounds. Nevertheless the DDT is widely used during the 50’s and the 60’s, in crop fields and animal stables, and even recommended through the advisory system for crop protection (see a sample of a Bulletin d’Avertissements Agricoles that advise the use of pesticides for various types of crops).
The French translation of Silent Spring, published in 1963, was a success in France8. This sounds similar to the US case. However, it is not. The main difference is that, in France, the issue was globally contained and hardly overflowed experts and professional arena9. The authority of influential experts of the ComTox was instrumental to convince specific audiences that although Carson’s claims were probably true for the USA, the French system was rigorous and protective of the population against dangers related to the use of insecticides. Also, experts of integrated pest management, although they might be natural allies, challenged the scientific accuracy of Carson’s analysis when she called for a radical shift toward biological control (FOURCHE, 2004 :
139-‐145). They stated that the use of pesticides was necessary and that the main problem lied in the lack of competence of the government services in charge of controlling their good use; they also expressed deep concern about the spreading of approximate or false scientific statements in public opinion 10.
7 The French Congress reports that pesticides induce resistance of dust mites that severely affect production capacity. DDT is the main target of these concerns. In the 50s’, adverse effects of DDT are observed on bees.
This causes severe problems when used on rapeseed in the flowering period. In 1950, resistance of grape worms to DDT is observed in Alsace. In the mid 60s’, observation of resistance of Colorado beetle is observed, which triggers a reduction of the area of potatoes (FOURCHE,2004). This problem is much discussed in professional arenas, and in State technical services.
8 ”The reputation of the French publisher, Plon, the scientific status of the preface writer, the naturalist Roger Heim, Director of the National Museum of Natural History and President of the National Academy of Science#, as well as the reproduction of large extracts from the book in the popular magazine Paris Match, made Rachel Carson’s thesis on pesticides hugely accessible” (JAS,2007:369-370)
9 The Swedish case is quite different. According to EEA Report, just after the publication of Silent Spring in Sweden (1964), the Swedish government gave special funding to Stockholm University to set up a laboratory for the analysis of DDT in the environment (BERNES,1998). These activities lead, inter alia, to the identification of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) as environmental contaminants in 1966. This research on environmental chemistry provided evidence that lead to the ban of DDT in 1970 (probably the earliest ban worldwide).
10 Even in the ranks of prominent naturalists, as the famous ornithologist Jean Dorst, author of the best-seller Before nature dies, the tendency was to alert against the uncontrolled use of pesticides, while denouncing the fact that, due to Silent Spring and its media impact, “many polemics and discussions dealt and still deal this tricky problem, very far beyond scientific and technic circles it should remain confined.” (DORST,(1965)2012:
243-244).
